Howard Norman - I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place

At dusk I watched as the AA meeting let out from the church basement. It was a Thursday; everyone knew that’s when the AA meeting took place. Most of the AA people seemed reluctant to leave and stood around talking, lighting cigarettes in the courtyard inside the stone wall. It was at that moment I saw — or thought I saw — a Confederate soldier who was in the Civil War documentary. This couldn’t be true, but I didn’t immediately credit my fever with making it seem true. I was too lost in his face. And what was stranger yet was the fact that I knew the exact photograph he had appeared in, one taken by Alexander Gardner. In that photograph, a Rebel soldier — this same man — sat in haggard despondency near a stone wall as Union soldiers stood nearby in a tight circle smoking cigarettes, their bayoneted rifles propped against the wall not ten feet from their prisoner.

The man I “recognized” broke from the AA group and, with a slight limp (I thought, “war wound”), sauntered across the street and stood in front of the café window, where I got a closer look at him. He was probably in his late forties, with deep crow’s-feet at each eye. He was tall, with a gaunt face, wispy beard, and unusually thick eyebrows. He stood there for about ten minutes. While the other dozen or so AA participants got into cars and drove off, this man walked from town up toward Maple Hill. As it happened, our waitress had woken up and come over to ask if I needed anything else. She had been born and raised in Plainfield. “Sandra,” I said, “did you see that guy smoking a cigarette just now, right out front here?”

“Of course I did. He was right on the sidewalk. Sure, I saw him.”

“Do you know his name?

“He’s not from around here, at least not Plainfield. Did he come from the AA meeting?”

“Yes, he did. Definitely, he did.”

She set down my check and went back to the kitchen.

I continued to frequent the millpond, sometimes three times a week, and had alerted people at the Nature Conservancy and other environmental organizations about the peculiar behavior of the kingfisher. I was certain it was in trouble. When I didn’t get much response from those sources, I telephoned a friend who worked in the ornithological laboratory at Cornell University. She listened to my description of the kingfisher’s behavior and said, “Well, it’s still alive, which means it’s catching fish. It’s surviving so far. That’s good. My guess is some sort of parasite.” She called the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, and two state biologists met me a couple of days later at the millpond. While waiting for them, I took my temperature—100—and stripped down and took a quick swim, then saw their truck coming up the road.

The two biologists, a man and a woman, introduced themselves. The woman climbed right up the lightning-struck maple and, using specially made padded tongs, clasped the weakened kingfisher and gently brought it to ground. “Obviously, I couldn’t have caught this bird if it was in tiptop shape,” she said. “We’ll run some tests and get it back here as soon as possible. There’s a hawk and a crow ahead of it in the lab, but it won’t take but a day or two.” Off they went in their truck.

I kept my sightings of the Confederate soldier to myself — after all, it was my dispute with reality — but I saw him on the following dates: July 23, walking past Country Books in Plainfield, near Plainfield United Methodist Church; July 27, dressed in the same clothes{{DEANNE: reader should know what he’s wearing; I asked this earlier and got no response}} he had on the evening of the AA meeting, and smoking a cigarette in front of the Plainfield fire station; and July 29, walking out empty-handed from the Plainfield post office. That same evening, I saw him walk by the front of the café in Plainfield and again head toward Maple Hill; this time he was wearing a Confederate soldier’s cap. (I thought, Yeah, but so what? I’ve seen those for sale at the army-navy store on Route 2.) I’d noticed a Goddard College student sporting one just a few weeks earlier. Still, I made an appointment with a psychotherapist in Montpelier.

Lost Cat notices with a photograph of Pemberton were displayed on every general store, post office, and food co-op bulletin board in the area — cats can wander surprising distances. Rural Vermont cat stories could fill a thousand-page anthology. There was a story about a cat in Woodbury that had leaped into the back of a UPS truck only to be discovered when the driver was unloading boxes 150 miles away. Another story told of a cat in Danville that had somehow wedged itself into a cubbyhole in an enormous barn; its owners could hear it yowling, but because of the peculiar acoustics of the barn — this also occurred during days and nights of thunderstorms — could not find the cat itself. A full week passed, and the voice of the cat grew weaker. Early one morning, the family’s fifteen-year-old daughter looked up and saw a cat’s tail waving out from a hole. The cat had somehow positioned itself so as to flag its location.

Yet another cat story: A cat had wandered away from a campsite in Groton State Forest. Its owners, a young couple, saw it scamper up an oak tree, and they walked along below it, following the cat as it leaped from tree to tree at various elevations for a good long way. Then it disappeared in the treetops. The couple moved their campsite. For two days and nights they did not see the cat. After searching for another full day, they decided to go to the general store in Marshfield to get some food and bottled water. Not about to give up hope, they returned to their original campsite and set up their tent there. In the morning, the woman opened her eyes to find the cat sitting on her chest.

Then there was the Russian blue communally owned and cared for by the fire department of a small town in southern Vermont. The cat had curled itself up inside the folded American flag that was raised every morning on the pole in front the station. When a rookie fireman raised the flag, the cat, its claws clinging to the cloth, went up with it. The rookie figured that all he needed to do was lower the flag and the cat would be rescued. By now the entire fire crew was watching, along with various townsfolk. When the rookie began to lower the flag, the cat removed itself to the rounded top of the flagpole, precariously holding on for dear life. But the moment he saw the cat transfer itself to the pole, the fire chief ordered his crew to hold trampoline-like safety nets around the pole, and just in the nick of time, because the cat plummeted, landing uninjured on one of the nets, at which point it jumped from the net, walked into the fire station, and began to drink from its water bowl.

From my first appointment I decided that the therapist would not be much help. I doubted that I actually wanted to get to the heart of the mystery. Moreover, I think I wanted the Confederate soldier to be some sort of representation, or verification, of the astonishing sadness my neighbors, my family, and I felt while watching The Civil War.

“We see what we wish to see sometimes,” Dr. ____, the therapist, said after I’d described my Confederate ghost to him.

“If that’s the case, it’s about time I had a wish come true,” I said. I felt as if I were channeling my older brother’s snide tone, his predisposition toward a lack of basic civility.

“Okay,” he said, undaunted. “Here’s an idea. Why not go looking for this man. This Confederate soldier. Set up a kind of surveillance, dedicate yourself to finding him like a detective might. Or hire a detective. I could give you some names. Track this man down, and if you find him — according to your many recent sightings he’s in the Plainfield area. If you find him, just ask him his name. He might be offended, but he might be. . civil.”